From the prior art there are known apparatuses for processing bank notes which have an input pocket for receiving bank notes, a singling device, a transport system, a checking device arranged along the transport system, and several output pockets. The bank notes are checked according to certain criteria and sorted into different output pockets in accordance with the results of the check. All bank notes upon whose check an error has occurred are deposited in a certain output pocket. An error can occur for example when a bank note has not been recognized, e.g. because it is unknown or on account of a multiple removal upon singling of the bank notes. Immediately after the end of bank-note processing of an accounting unit, the stack of faulty bank notes is post-processed, in particular counted, by the operator of the apparatus in order for the number of processed bank notes of the particular accounting unit to be properly registered. The processing of bank notes of a new accounting unit is only started when the faulty bank notes of the preceding accounting unit have been removed from the apparatus. A disadvantage of this method is that the operator of the apparatus must manually remove the faulty bank notes from the apparatus immediately after the end of processing in order for the operation of the apparatus not to be interrupted too long between two accounting units.
Furthermore, apparatuses are known that process bank notes at very high speed, so that the faulty bank notes cannot be post-processed immediately after processing, but for time reasons must be stored temporarily. In so doing, all bank notes checked by the apparatus and evaluated as faulty by the checking device are transported to a single temporary store, e.g. to a film accumulator, in which the faulty bank notes of many different accounting units are stored successively. After a multiplicity of accounting units have been processed, the temporary store containing the faulty bank notes of all accounting units is removed from the apparatus by the operator and inserted into a post-processing apparatus. For post-processing, the post-processing apparatus fetches the faulty bank notes out of the temporary store in reverse order, i.e.
the faulty bank notes stored last are removed from the temporary store first and post-processed. With said temporary store, however, it is not possible to carry out the post-processing of the faulty bank notes immediately after the automatic processing of the bank notes by the apparatus, because the faulty bank notes are stored in the temporary store so as to be inaccessible to the operator.